KISHAU PACT LEAVES PUNJAB OUT OF THE YAMUNA AGAIN; PUNJAB IS OWED A CHAIR AT THE TABLE, SAYS FORMER SPECIAL CHIEF SECRETARY KBS SIDHU
Writing as a private citizen, he asks the Union Jal Shakti Minister to make Punjab a full member of the Upper Yamuna River Board before the project goes to the Union Cabinet
Chandigarh/Patiala, 16 September 2026 (Yes Punjab News)
On the day following the signing of the Kishau Multipurpose Project Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) in New Delhi, KBS Sidhu, IAS (Retd.), has shot off a letter to Union Jal Shakti Minister C.R. Paatil. KBS Sidhu superannuated as Special Chief Secretary, Government of Punjab, and earlier served as the State’s Principal Secretary, Irrigation. His letter protests that the six-State pact leaves Punjab out of the Yamuna basin once again, with no seat, no hearing and no mention. He wants that exclusion corrected before the Union Cabinet approves the project.
“This is not about cusecs or million acre-feet,” KBS Sidhu said. “It is about Punjab’s inalienable right to a chair at the Yamuna table, and not merely a share of its waters.”
The Chief Ministers of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi signed the MoA on 15 September in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Shri Paatil. The Centre has since declared Kishau a national project and will meet ninety per cent of its water-component cost. Punjab was not a signatory and was not consulted. It has had no place on the Upper Yamuna River Board since the basin States divided the river’s waters in 1994.
KBS Sidhu points to a double standard that has run for six decades. Haryana draws Ravi–Beas water to this day on the footing that its territory was part of riparian Punjab before the reorganisation of 1 November 1966. By the same token, undivided Punjab abutted the Yamuna through the Jagadhri–Yamunanagar belt of Ambala district. “If Haryana carried its Ravi–Beas claim across 1966, Punjab carried its Yamuna standing across the same date, under the same Act,” he said. “The logic cannot run one way only.”
He was emphatic that Punjab is not standing in the way of anyone’s drinking water. “Punjab does not grudge Delhi or Rajasthan a single glass of drinking water from Kishau,” he said. He recalled that Punjab gave its no-objection for Haryana’s Kaushalya dam on the Ghaggar, which supplies drinking water to Panchkula. “Punjab has shown it is not unreasonable. What it will not accept is being left outside the room every time the basin’s water is decided.”
KBS Sidhu writes as a private citizen with no affiliation to any political party. His letter makes three requests, all to be met before the proposal reaches the Union Cabinet:
- that the Cabinet note record Punjab’s exclusion and the basis for it;
- that Punjab be admitted as a full member of the Upper Yamuna River Board;
- that Punjab be heard whenever the 1994 Yamuna allocations are reviewed.
Copies have gone to the Union Home Minister, the Chief Secretary of Punjab, the Secretary of the Department of Water Resources, the Chairman of the Central Water Commission and the Member Secretary of the Upper Yamuna River Board. The copy to the Chief Secretary asks that the State Government consider making a formal representation of its own.
KBS Sidhu also remarked on the silence at home. Since the MoA was signed, he said, not one political party, pressure group or activist has raised so much as a whisper in public. Nor has any of the self-styled river-waters experts who speak so often of Punjab’s rights.
The Centre’s answer will cut both ways, he argued. If a successor State keeps its standing in a basin it once shared, Punjab belongs on the Upper Yamuna River Board. If present-day geography alone decides, Haryana has no footing for any existing or future demand on the Ravi–Beas system. That question gains weight now that India has held the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance: waters from the western rivers, he said, will eventually be diverted into the Ravi–Beas network. “Whichever way the Centre answers, it sets a precedent for Punjab,” he said. “Either Punjab gets its chair on the Yamuna, or Haryana loses its claim on the Ravi and the Beas.”
Contact: KBS Sidhu · kbs.sidhu@gmail.com
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